Read our series of Q&As with candidates vying to replace recently resigned Board Chair Nora Vargas. Click here.
Imperial Beach Mayor Paloma Aguirre has a ready answer when asked why voters should pick her to represent South San Diego County on the powerful five-member County Board of Supervisors.
“I am about good and effective and transparent governance,” Aguirre said in an interview earlier this week. “I get stuff done. And I am not afraid to shake up the status quo.”
Aguirre spoke with Voice of San Diego about her Supervisor campaign for nearly an hour on Monday. She discussed housing, homelessness, the Tijuana River sewage crisis, public safety and other issues she said would be top priorities if she’s elected to the Board.
The conversation was the first in a series of interviews with candidates vying to replace former Board Chair Nora Vargas, whose abrupt – and, so far, unexplained – resignation last month upended politics in San Diego County.
The Board, which oversees many of the San Diego region’s most important governmental functions, will decide next week whether to appoint a replacement for Vargas or, as is widely expected, schedule a special election to fill her seat.
Aguirre, 47, was elected to the Imperial Beach City Council in 2018. Elected mayor in 2022, she has spent much of her time in office seeking to wrangle money and other resources to fix the ongoing sewage crisis in the Tijuana River, which has been polluted for decades by untreated sewage and industrial waste flowing across the U.S.-Mexico border.
She has won plaudits for helping to draw national attention to the issue, and late last year she took a victory lap after Congress approved an additional $250 million to fix an ailing cross-border sewage plant. Residents and City Councilmembers on both sides of the political aisle describe her as an effective leader who listens to opposing viewpoints and achieves results by finding common ground.
Her challenge now will be widening her base of support beyond Imperial Beach, where she has lived since arriving in San Diego to attend college in the early 2000s. Before entering politics, Aguirre held leadership positions in a local environmental nonprofit and worked as a legislative aide in the Washington, D.C. office of New Jersey Senator Cory Booker.
Aguirre is also a onetime competitive bodyboarder and said she still surfs – though not in Imperial Beach, where beaches have been mostly closed in recent years due to the sewage crisis. Aguirre and her husband, Delio, live in Imperial Beach with their two dogs, Dante and Dasha.
Editor’s note: The following interview edited for length and clarity.
Q: What do you think are the most important issues facing San Diego County?
A: Well, the county as a whole is facing a lot of different issues. For District 1 [in South San Diego County], one of the existential threats is something that I’ve been fighting for nearly 20 years, which is the transboundary pollution crisis, which not only impacts the environment, it’s an economic crisis and it’s a public health crisis.
Housing is a huge issue, especially for District 1. We have the highest rate of households who are overburdened, meaning that more than 30 percent of income is going towards housing. We have the lowest median household income in the entire county. And we have the lowest number of affordable housing projects that are supported by the county. So, taking a look at how resources are fairly distributed is extremely important to me.
And we can’t talk about housing without talking about homelessness, especially tackling mental illness and mental health and making sure that we have enough behavioral health services, including behavioral health beds.
Spring Valley [a proposed shelter that was tabled earlier this year following objections from nearby residents, costing the county $10 million in grant money] was a lost opportunity. That’s unacceptable. We need to make sure we get enough resources from the state and federal government. It’s something that I have demonstrated the ability to do by working on the state and federal level. I’m no stranger to Congress. I’ve actually gone three times this past year.
Q: On the sewage issue, what would you seek to do as supervisor that you haven’t been able to do as mayor?
A: There’s all this money now to fix [the ailing plant that treats cross-border sewage], which, by the way, we worked really hard to get across the finish line. But the plant is not taking any water from the Tijuana River itself. And did you know that the main source of pollution for us is the river? It’s a seasonal river. There should be zero flow in that river right now. All of that water is industrial and residential wastewater.
We need to advocate at the federal level to change the [treatment] plan to start treating water from the river. It’s this big elephant in the room. The main source of pollution is not being tackled, and that’s what I’m hoping to work on with the Trump administration, so that we can waive those environmental reviews and laws, divert that river into treatment and then seek sources of funding from our Mexican partners.
We’ve been suffering for far too long. There is no other situation like this in the entire nation. The closest thing to this is Flint, Michigan. I will absolutely do whatever it takes to get this fixed because it is fixable.
Q: You mentioned homelessness and behavioral health, top issues for many voters. What are your plans?
A: We’re going to need about 18,000 behavioral health staff countywide to truly start making a difference. We need to increase partnerships with service providers, whether it’s University of California, San Diego or other health facilities. We need to ensure that we’re doing the proper training so that the moment we get a referral we can place people in permanent housing, if not permanent supportive housing.
This isn’t an issue specific to District 1. I see a lot of similarities with other districts, like lower income areas and unincorporated areas of East County, where you have similar poverty levels. Those are the types of things I look forward to partnering with some of the other supervisors on and finding that common ground.
Q: Pivoting to public safety, did you vote for Proposition 36 [a state ballot measure that stiffened sentences for a range of property and drug crimes]?
A: I did vote for it, yes.
Q: What balance would you seek between law enforcement and public health approaches to drug use, mental illness and other conditions linked to homelessness?
A: Well, I don’t think over-policing is ever the solution to anything. Obviously, we need to have better resources to offer the public. Even your CEO Scott Lewis was saying [in a recent first-person story] he didn’t know who to call [to help a homeless person in distress]. And usually people end up calling 911.
We should have a basic 211-type number that’s easy to remember to report these types of mental incidences, so that we can bring in behavioral health care specialists, so the situation doesn’t escalate into something that ends up potentially a tragedy. And we absolutely have a significant need for behavioral health specialists from all the different points of the equation, from first responders, to assessment, to placement, to ultimately reintegration.
Q: One of the other candidates for District 1 Supervisor [San Diego City Councilmember Vivian Moreno] has been calling for removal of the toll on State Route 125. What’s your view?
A: Do I think it’s unfair that we’re one of the last toll roads that actually still has a toll? Yes. Should the toll be removed? Absolutely. I mean, it’s a major corridor that people should have access to.
But should that replace public transit? Absolutely not. I will always favor public transit. And we need more of that. It’s not the only solution, I get that, especially in North County. Sometimes you have to balance out those factors in the decisions that you make because it’s not a one size fits all type of issue.
Q: On affordable housing, some people say the solution is simply to build more housing, even if that means loosening environmental regulations. Others say the solution is more government involvement, whether through housing subsidies, vouchers or protections for tenants. How would you seek to solve San Diego’s affordable housing crisis?
A: I’ve said this very publicly, you cannot just take this ‘build, baby build’ approach and build market-rate housing everywhere. We have the highest percent of households that are overburdened in District 1. So, obviously, this trickle-down housing economics approach that some folks are in favor of isn’t working.
We have one of the highest median home prices and median rent prices in the nation. We need to find a good balance [between government and the private sector]. If both sides are mad at you, that’s a good sign, because you’re trying to find that balance, right? You can’t just cater to market-rate developers and not try to create housing for medium- and low- and very-low-income buyers.
Q: Anything else you want voters to know about you?
A: Here locally, we have been feeling very, very disenfranchised and almost borderline criminally neglected. There is a deep sense of frustration, of working hard every day, trying to put food on the table, trying to keep your kids in school, trying to get them to do well, having to work two or up to three jobs just to keep a roof over your head. The thought of spending millions and millions of dollars on others rather than taking care of your local community and those who’ve been working hard is a hard pill [for many voters] to swallow.
You’ll find that I take a practical, good governance, people-first approach. That’s how I like to govern. Put food on the table. Put a roof over your head. These other symbolic [issues] are important, but they shouldn’t be your central focus.
And I just want to add, I’m very grateful for the experience I’ve had these last two years [as mayor of Imperial Beach]. Imperial Beach is a Democratic supermajority community. However, we have three non-Democrats on the council. I made it a point to put politics aside, put the election aside [in which Aguirre defeated fellow Councilmember Jack Fisher], and I said, ‘We’re going to start from scratch. We’re going work together and we’re going to find common ground.’ And I think we’ve done that.
Excellent informative interview. Thank you.